Portland Restaurant Reviews

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Hotlips Pizza SE

Updated 4/9/2009 – Slices are $2.75, folks. Toppings are still as local and vibrant as ever, and vegan pie bases include olive oil and herbs, sundried tomato pesto, squash puree and cilantro pesto. I recently shared a vegan pie, pictured below, with friends and it was fantastic – with a surprisingly thin crust for Hot Lips.

Date: August 19, 2007
Times Visited: Too Many Too Count

Hotlips Pizza offers vegan pizza fans the cheapest slice in town. At $2.50, their vegan slice is actually a thick triangle of focaccia, adorned with seasonal, local produce and a base of cilantro pesto, sundried tomato pesto or olive oil and garlic. The local chain’s four locations are in the Pearl District, SE on Hawthorne Blvd, NE 33rd and PSU and all tend to have the focaccia by the slice. Each location will also make an entire vegan pie ($17.20) for dine it, take out or delivery.

My favorite location is on Hawthorne, which typically has the sundried tomato pesto. The beauty of this local chain truly is the variety and appreciation of the local produce they work with. This week your slice may have shiitake mushrooms, Walla Walla onions and arugula, and next week you’re looking at black olives, summer squash and roasted red pepper. In that respect, the element of surprise is there. I must say that I go in hoping it’s not a cilantro pesto day at PSU, but if it is, there are also fresh salads and some locations offer vegan sandwiches. Unfortunately, the tempting bread sticks are not vegan. If you dig hot sauce, be sure to check out their chipotle and habanero varieties, to give your slice an extra zing. These hot sauces, as well as local berry sodas and pickled jalapenos, are all available bottled to go. On top of it all, Hot Lips has the crispest pepperocinis in town. They also have microbrews on tap.

That slice in particular really impressed me topping wise, though there was something on it I wasn’t digging that I couldn’t identify, which was strange..
Give it another try, Megan – but I’m curious, what didn’t you like about them?

When I went into the Hawthorn Hot Lips last week they had vegan breadsticks. Unfortunately they were covered in cilantro pesto, so that doesn’t do you much good, but there is hope that perhaps they’ll decide to do ordinary basil pesto at some point.

i wish they would sell the breadsticks plain(like Papa John’s) because they’re damn good. it’s usually what i ended up eating when working at outside events since they don’t do vegan pies at those events. i’d just snag one or two before they dowsed it with the nonvegan shizzle.

The PSU location will do special order breadsticks using the sundried tomato pesto with no cheese. I haven’t had luck getting the other locations to do this though. It does take a little more time though.

Recently, I went in and they were out of vegan slices. To make up for the wait until the next pie was ready, they gave me a free soda and only charged me for one slice, but gave me 3 (I couldn’t finish it all.) It’s nice that they value their vegan customers enough to go that effort.

regarding the update:
i ate that with Miss JD and i didn’t care for the thin crust. i was the only one who thought this (or perhaps maeve agreed with me?), so if you like the thick crust, i’m pretty sure you could just mention that you want it like the vegan slices (it’s the same “giant” crust just not as tossed thin)